Recent Entries from Julia MeltzerMovable Type Pro 4.382014-03-27T01:00:00Zhttp://www.kcet.org/user/profile/djwaldie/feed/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=feed&_type=posts&username=jmeltzerThe Future of the Unfinished Obelisktag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.711982014-03-27T08:00:00Z2014-04-23T23:25:17ZArtist Michael Parker will be engaging with the public over the next six months with a series of programs at "The Unfinished" site along the L.A. River.Julia Meltzerhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=17503"The Unfinished" is an obelisk-shaped excavation located along the banks of the channelized L.A. River. The horizontal excavation, dug into and through the asphalt of an empty post-industrial lot, will be a 137-foot to-scale replica of the Ancient Egyptian archaeological site known as "The Unfinished Obelisk."

At almost noon on March 15, the 27D mini excavator operated by Troy Rounsville took it's final mouthfuls of soil from the two foot trench that surrounds the form of the 137-foot obelisk. Completing "The Unfinished" took a total of five days, and artist Michael Parker had been working around the clock. Tired, but elated, all he had left to do was to install the sign "The Unfinished" so the guests who were to arrive soon knew they had come to the right place. The gate, a steel arm that swings inwards with six locks, marks the entrance to the the Bowtie Parcel, a post-industrial site owned by California State Parks and slated to become a park in the future. Next to the gate is another metal sign with the words "CLOSED AREA" and "AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY." For today, however, and into the next six months, the public will be allowed access to one of the more beautiful parcels of post-industrial land along the L.A. River.

Guests numbering close to 200 arrived in a steady stream that afternoon. At 4 o'clock, the sun was still high, there was a soft breeze, it was a perfect early spring afternoon. The sounds of the 2 freeway melded with the river, the occasional Metro North or Amtrak train chugged by, and people hung out and enjoyed Parker's urban earthwork and the L.A. River. It felt like a kind of homecoming, the river was comfortable with the people in her midst. She only asked, "Why did it take you so long to come back?"

"The Unfinished" came about through a unique partnership between Parker, California State Parks, and Clockshop, the organization that I founded and direct. Many might venture that the State of California would not allow a temporary massive obelisk to be carved into their property. Even I thought the chances were slim that the project would be approved as it moved up the bureaucratic food chain. The flurry of financial concern and mismanagement surrounding California State Parks over the past several years led me to assume that their concerns would outweigh any appreciation of the potential benefits that art might bring.

"So why was this project allowed?" I asked Sean Woods, the superintendent of the Los Angeles sector of California State Parks, who was key to making it all happen. "Bringing contemporary art to a site like the Bowtie parcel allows a unique opportunity to engage people with public land with relatively little to no cost to the state," he told me. "It is an interesting way to jolt people out of their conception of what a public park is supposed to be or look like and to have them experience the space." Woods continued: "A different model is called for the few "brown-field parcels" that are owned by the state because there is no funding in place to bring these pieces of land back to life. We have to activate the public and get them invested and involved."

At the opening reception Woods overheard people saying, "'Wow, I never knew that the L.A. River was here and that it is so beautiful and lush.' There is a multiplier effect there, and art is a way to bring people who might never come down to the Bowtie, and allow them to experience the place in addition to the art."

And there are others who are in sync with Wood's hunch. Last week in a conversation that was part of the Frogtown Futuro program at Clockshop, Michael Parker and historian and writer Jenny Price discussed "The Unfinished" and the future of the L.A. River. Price said, "Art has the power to make the invisible visible. The L.A. river has been lost to most Los Angelenos, and art will be one of the major tools that we will use to bring it back."

None of these ideas are new at all to Lewis MacAdams and the group that he founded, Friends of the L.A. River, or FOLAR, in fact, he considers the group to be a 40 year art project. Lewis was also at the opening reception of "The Unfinished", and we spoke as the sun was setting just beyond the Observatory at Griffith Park. MacAdams strongly believes that the L.A. River needs to go through a healing process. It might sound new-agey, but somehow when Lewis invokes these words, they come across as completely sensible and true.

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Taken in by the scale of the piece, Lewis told, me, "This is the first artwork to really match the scale of the river. Most pieces have been swallowed up by the river but "The Unfinished" matches the power of the river." He continued, "This piece points the way between the artist and the remediation of the land. Parker is taking a piece of unused post-industrial land and using art to begin the process of remediation and healing."

And in order to further the healing, Michael Parker will be engaging with the site and the public over the next six months with a series of programs and events at the Bowtie parcel. The first event, programmed with Clockshop, is a reading by Maggie Geoga on April 11th of an unfinished story, "The Doomed Prince" translated from Ancient Egyptian.

California State Parks is on-board for these events as well. Sean Woods confirmed, "The key is in the programming. We need to keep people coming and experiencing both the art work and the Bowtie, so they can start to claim ownership and imagine a different future for the L.A. River and the public who will use it."

"The Unfinished"will be open to the public on the afternoons of the first Sunday of the month starting in May until September. 2-6 pm.

Sunday May 4th
Sunday June 1st
Sunday July 6th
Sunday August 3rd
Sunday September 7th

**Please note, this schedule is currently in development, to stay informed about additional events, sign up for our mailing list here, like Clockshop on Facebook, follow us on Tumbler or on Twitter @clockshopla.

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Top Image: "The Unfinished" Crew | Photo by Alexis Chanes

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Morrie Markoff: Emerging Art of a Centenarian tag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.708132014-03-11T21:25:00Z2014-03-12T23:25:23ZAt age 100, Morrie Markoff has his first gallery exhibition at the Red Pipe Gallery in L.A.'s Chinatown.Julia Meltzerhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=17503
Even at age 100, Morrie Markoff never sits still. Recently, the centenarian worked the room at the Red Pipe Gallery in Chinatown, and like the emerging artist that he is; he barely took a moment to sip wine in between talking to enthralled gallery-goers. Pointing at a figure of a ballerina with a little poof for a skirt, he recounted the story of how he came to make his first sculpture, a small bronze ballerina. "One day, I happened to be getting rid of a toilet, and I noticed the shape of the ball in the tank and I realized that the pleats were reminiscent of a ballerina's tutu. So I whipped out my arc welder and made it for Betsy." Betty, as she is known to most, is Morrie's wife of 75 years.

Rain was soon on the way to downtown L.A., yet the room was warmly filled with friends, family, and strangers who most likely were drawn downtown by Steve Lopez's column in the L.A. Times about Markoff. One man I met while standing outside the gallery had been friends with Morrie's son, Steve, years ago when they were growing up, but hadn't seen neither father nor son for 50 years. He came to reconnect. I passed by another viewer who commented to me, "This work is extraordinary. Steve Lopez sold it short."

Also present at the Red Pipe were Rita Gonzalez, a curator at LACMA, Paolo D'Avanzo director and founder of the Echo Park Film Center, and filmmaker Rebecca Baron. When you are 100, and as gregarious as Morrie, you rack up the friends and associates, both young and old, with ease.

In fact, the way this show came to happen was not due to a studio visit from the gallerist or from gossip that Morrie Markoff was the next big thing in the art world, but from a conversation started while waiting for a bus. Morrie and Betty, who live downtown, were on the way to the Home Depot on Figueroa Street. Also at the bus stop was Tracy Huston, the owner of the Red Pipe Gallery. And as it usually happens the conversation between the three of them began and soon an art show to celebrate Morrie's centenary year was in the works.

The work that would be exhibited are representational wire sculptures of quotidian scenes from Markoff's "bronze period" which lasted from 1951-1962. And then placed carefully above the sculptures are representational paintings -- an orthodox rabbi painted in oil is one -- and black and white photographs from their world travels.

These pieces were familiar to me because Morrie and Betty Markoff were my neighbors at the Avenel Street Cooperative in Silver Lake for a number of years before they packed up and relocated to Bunker Hill at age 98 and 95, respectively. On my visits to their unit, located on the path above ours, I was introduced to the treasures created by Morrie in his workshop. On mornings over waffles and tea, I was invited to look through the albums filled with black and white photographs from their travels around the world.

The Markoffs are like family, their New York Jewish ways, their values and politics, the objects that surround them in their home, and the cadence of their speech remind me of my family, especially my father, who grew up in the Bronx and relocated here in his 20s. My dad, now in his early 80s, a photographer, psychiatrist, and constant do-er always has a new project. For him and Morrie, the later decades are not a time to slow down and take it easy, but a time to fit in all the things that life has to offer and are not to be missed.

A first gallery show of work created over a lifetime, why not?

I was with Morrie last weekend at his daughter Judy's apartment downtown, we spoke about his show and this new identity of being an artist over bagels, lox and cream cheese. In between bites, Morrie enthusiastically told me, "This art business is an ego trip! A lot of old friends came by, one whom I haven't even seen in 50 years. But I was worried about all the publicity. Who knows? They might notify the creditors!"

Morrie's sense of humor is always present and at times connected to his coming of age, and being a Jewish New Yorker, in the midst of the depression. He clarified for me, "I'm not an artist, I'm a machinist. I made these things during a period of time when my work was very stressful and going into my workshop at night to weld helped get my mind off of things. The inspiration struck me and I made them. "

And, to be sure, Morrie is a worker. While I was looking at the show, I noticed that all of the sculptures, except one, show people in action, doing something. "Sweat and Toil" is based on a photograph that Morrie took in Mexico City in 1951 of a group of workers dragging an i-beam into place. He remembered the scene vividly and reproduced the scene in bronze in 1965 capturing the essence of life, movement, and work.

In describing his work, Morrie explained, "All of the pieces were drawn from scenes that I had witnessed. One day I was in Griffith Park and there was a family sitting together on a bench. The mother an father were reading, then the little girl came up and laid down in her mother's lap and fell asleep. Soon the mother was asleep and next, the father, who was reading a newspaper, dozed off as well. I was just amazed that he never dropped his newspaper. "

During Morrie's working life he ran an air-conditioning business with a partner and was always the go-to person in the community when something broken needed to be fixed. All of the sculptures are made out of scrap metal that was left over from air-conditioning repairs. The busy season in the AC business was during the spring, summer and early fall. In the winter, he was able to take time off and travel with his family.

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Betty, a very practical and no-nonsense 97 year-old said about her husband, "If he had grown up in a different way, in a different time, who knows what he would have become? The sculptures reflect him, he responds to people that way. It all comes out of life, something that he saw, something that had happened."

Morrie continues, "I couldn't make them today. It was an inspired period, they were all made in 10 years. I stopped when I sold the business because I got more interested in photography and I didn't have the scrap metal anymore. The inspiration went. But I'm glad I went with the inspiration because anything that you make and people appreciate it, you are happy."

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